The Red Oak Creek Covered Bridge’s longevity is nearly as astounding as the story of its builder, Horace King, part black, part white, part Catawba Indian—a man so far ahead of his time that he wore a soul patch 60 years before anyone heard of jazz.

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It doesn’t much matter what I think about Superica and The El Felix, Ford Fry’s two new Tex-Mex restaurants with almost identical menus and almost identical lines. When I asked the manager of The El Felix—in Avalon, the Alpharetta mall-city—how many diners they served, he said, “Three to four hundred on a slow night.”

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Style & Substance

How to decorate with summer's happiest hues, a Swedish midsummer celebration, where to shop on the Westside, Nancy Braithwaite on Coco Chanel, luxe life on the lake, an essay from Mary Kay Andrews, and much more in the summer issue of Atlanta Magazine's HOME.

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Southbound magazine, the newest ancillary title from the publishers of Atlanta magazine, showcases the top travel destinations in the Southeast. We visit idyllic small towns and exciting cities in search of outstanding vacation opportunities.Inside Southbound

Custom Publication

Georgia offers diverse places to see and things to do, from the mountains in North Georgia to the coasts of Savannah and The Golden Isles. Take a tour in your own backyard and visit all that our great state has to offer. Begin your tour

Dining in has its advantages: You can wear what you want, eat when you want, and drink as much as you like. To craft the perfect dinner party but skip dirtying the kitchen, look to these seven purveyors for the best meat, cheese, pasta, wine, and dessert.

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July 2015: Top Doctors

The list of doctors whom other doctors trust most. Plus, a roundtable of experts on the challenges of Alzheimer’s disease, and an Atlanta photographer documents his surgeon father’s struggle with dementia.

Rough South Home founder upcycles salvage finds

“I find the weird stuff no one wants.” That’s how Clarke Titus begins our conversation as we traipse through a cluttered salvage yard a half dozen miles west of Atlanta. To the Kirkwood furniture maker, the decades-old trash is full of potential. Like a Depression-era Georgia freight car paneled with ten-foot-long pine boards. Titus used the weathered wood—stenciled here and there with numbers and workers’ instructions—to create more than a dozen original pieces, including tables, mirrors, consoles, and a king-sized headboard. At his studio, Rough South Home, he has repurposed industrial filters, factory fans, air movers, well buckets, restaurant equipment, and even MARTA subway doors.

The thirty-six-year-old has a gift for reinvention, including when it comes to his own career. Titus has been a golf pro, a cook, and a writer. “The most important thing I learned is that if you are a perfectionist, the only person you should work for is yourself,” he says. “I started RSH because the time was right for me to make a change and bet on myself. It took on a life of its own. Most importantly, it makes my family happy, and my boss is an awesome guy.”

Since launching RSH in 2011, Titus has done mostly custom work, but this summer he is introducing small batches of products based on his most popular designs. Available for purchase on his website, these tables, chairs, and benches will be made with domestic hardwoods like white oak, walnut, cherry, and maple. All wood will be forest-free and hand-selected.

Titus relishes the entire building process. When creating a coffee table, for example, he lays out a handful of boards and tests various combinations. He stares, changes the layout, stares again. He’ll spend hours, sometimes days, finding exactly the right balance of grain, color, and texture. His passion for the wood, its nuances and history, comes across in the finished piece. Says Titus, “I’m self-taught, stubborn, and I won’t stop until I like it. It’s obvious when it’s the wrong combination. And when it’s right, it’s easy and calm. You can’t turn the piece into something it’s not. It’ll feel forced.”

Guys style Texture gives every room personality. For a manly touch, a sure bet is a leather chair, says designer Bob Brown, owner of the newly opened store Townhouse. “The more worn like a baseball glove, the better.”